Friday, October 17, 2014
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Why living small means living happily ever after
Here are just 4 simple reasons you should consider downsizing.
By: yerdle
Fri, Feb 22, 2013
Other countries have embraced small house living. Why can't we? (Photo: St. Nick/Shutterstock)
Living small is a creative lifestyle that can work anywhere. It's about finding what makes you happy, and focusing on that without the distractions of too much stuff and too much room. You don't have to build your own quirky tiny house or buy expensive multipurpose furniture to live happy in little spaces either!
Newly built apartments are getting smaller; the U.S. national average is now 982 square feet (a kingdom in Manhattan!), down from more than 1,000 square feet a decade ago. This is thanks in part to the micro-unit trend — apartments 300 square feet or even smaller — that has popped up in some cities in response to urgent housing needs.
If you're still not convinced, here are four more reasons to live small in this big world.
1. Location, location, location
Rent is going up across the U.S., and housing prices are slowly creeping up from their lows after the financial crisis. But why sweat it? Swapping extra room for the perfect neighborhood, close to everything you want, is easier on your wallet and might encourage you to get outside and enjoy your community more often. If you love where you live, your community becomes your living room.
2. Small living, smaller footprint
About 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. are caused by home energy use. Then there's all the stuff to fill every room with furniture, closets to fill with new clothes, big fridges to fill with food, half of which goes bad before you get to it ... The more you have, the more you throw in the landfill. Living small helps you buy only the stuff you really need or just have to have, but it's not about depriving yourself, it's about saving money and loving what you've got.
3. It's all the rage in Europe
Newly built homes in the U.S. are more than two and a half times bigger than U.K. homes on average, and more than 500 square feet bigger than any other European country's average. So they also use less energy, buy less, and according to the Happy Planet Index, enjoy life more while using less of the Earth's resources than Americans. Luckily, you don't have to be Roman to do as the Romans do.
4. Have not, clean not
It might seem trivial, but add up all the hours you spend cleaning your house, and then cut them in half. Feel better? According to the American Time Use Survey (2011), the average person spent more than four hours just cleaning house every week, not counting cooking, pets, garden work, the week's shopping or repairs around the house. Suddenly, sacrificing a few square feet doesn't feel like you're giving much up but wasted time and money.
Related on MNN:
Kasia Mychajlowycz, who wrote this for the sharing site Yerdle, is a freelance writer from Toronto who loves walking through cities, finding the best coffee and living in her cozy 300-square-foot apartment.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Wildlife Wednesday - A Tale of Two Cranes
09-29-2014 // By Michael Lipske
WATCH WORKERS GO ABOUT THE JOB OF HABITAT ENHANCEMENT on Nebraska’s Platte River and the words “tough love” come to mind.
Heavy-equipment operators grind their way through eastern redcedar and other woody vegetation on the river’s banks and sandbars and then disk the river bottom to tear at roots. “Then we pray for heavy rains and some moderate floods or pulse flows that can come in behind us and wash the unwanted growth and vegetation downriver,” says Jeff Oates, spokesman for the Crane Trust, a nonprofit group set up by NWF, the state of Nebraska and the Missouri Basin Power Project in the 1970s to protect and maintain habitat for whooping cranes, sandhill cranes and other migratory birds that seek refuge along this stretch of the Platte each spring.
There was a time when the Platte didn’t need help staying shipshape. Spring floods from Rocky Mountain snowmelt scoured away encroaching plant life before it became established, preserving the river’s sandbars and shoreline as inviting habitat for migratory cranes and other birds. But as dams and other water-control structures went up along the river and its tributaries during the past century, the Platte’s power was harnessed for irrigation, electricity generation, drinking water and other uses. Overall flow in the Central Platte shrank by nearly 70 percent, and human intervention became necessary to mitigate the effects of man’s engineering marvels upstream.
Like millions of other migrants moving north in the Central Flyway, sandhill
and whooping cranes depend on the Platte as a critical stopover to feed and rest. From late February through mid-April, some 600,000 sandhills visit trust-managed lands along the Big Bend (above) reach of the river in south-central Nebraska. Roosting on vegetation-free sandbars at night (where they are relatively safe from coyotes and other predators), the cranes fatten on waste corn in surrounding farm fields during the day. This annual visitation by the long-legged, gray birds is the world’s largest concentration of cranes and one of the great wildlife spectacles of North America.
Not long after sandhills arrive, family groups and bonded pairs of whooping cranes show up along the Platte. Topping out at around 5 feet, whoopers are the continent’s tallest bird—with a wingspan of more than 7 feet and a nearly yard-long stride. Despite those spectacular dimensions, a whooper weighs no more than a large house cat.
Whooping cranes are also one of North America’s rarest birds. Decades of recovery efforts have brought the species back from a low of 15 individuals in 1941 to around 500 birds today. The roughly 300 whoopers that soar across Nebraska skies each spring and fall make up the species’ only remaining natural migratory population.
Differing vastly in overall numbers, whooping cranes and their somewhat shorter sandhill cousins have one thing in common. Both need help getting an adequate supply of freshwater, an increasingly scarce commodity in the West. For the past four decades, NWF and its state affiliates and other partners have been working hard to ensure that the cranes get the water they need to survive.
Resources for Cranes Drying Up
For whoopers, water woes begin well south of the Platte River. The statuesque cranes winter in salt marshes within Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast of Texas. “The big issue for Aransas in recent years has been drought,” says Myron Hess, counsel and manager of Texas water programs for NWF. The punishing, record-setting droughts Texans have endured of late have meant less rain falling on the whooper’s winter habitat and less water flowing into the estuary system and rivers that support the refuge—a situation worsened by increasing water withdrawals by people.
Diminished freshwater reaching the coastal refuge translates into increased salinity in the water flowing through Aransas marshes. Too much salinity results in smaller populations of blue crabs, the whooper equivalent of energy bars. A single hungry crane wolfs down as many as 80 protein-rich blue crabs in a day. During the bone-dry Texas winter of 2008-2009, conditions grew dire for both crabs and cranes at Aransas. Starving whoopers became emaciated and exhibited stress behavior; at least 23 of the endangered birds died on the refuge. Since then, the number of cranes appears to be increasing slowly but drought conditions have returned.
Freshwater for marshes inhabited by wintering whooping cranes comes primarily from the Guadalupe and San Antonio Rivers. During droughts, much of the rivers’ water arises from two large springs fed by the Edwards Aquifer, a groundwater system that also provides drinking water for San Antonio, the seventh largest city in the United States. For close to a decade, Hess has played a key role in efforts to hammer out a plan to limit pumping of aquifer water (by San Antonio and other cities and for agriculture and industry) during droughts as part of efforts to protect spring-flow-dependent threatened and endangered species. The impetus for the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan developed by NWF and other stakeholders—and approved last year—was a federal court order compelling Texas to protect the Texas blind salamander and other endangered animals that depend on aquifer springs.
Protecting endangered species upstream also benefits cranes at Aransas. “Unless it is intercepted along the way, every additional drop of water that comes out of those springs and into the rivers is more water that’s going to reach the coast and the whooping cranes,” Hess says.
Yet guaranteeing adequate water for wildlife in the Guadalupe and other Texas rivers remains a daunting challenge. “Each year the [state’s human] population jumps, and we use more and more water,” says NWF water-resources scientist Norman Johns, also based in Texas. “Almost every entity in Texas that sells water or manages water is trying to figure out how to get more; it’s like trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.”
Protecting Crane Habitat
Midway up the Central Flyway, maintaining habitat for cranes along the Platte has proved equally arduous.
The Crane Trust was born out of settlement of a lawsuit, launched in the late 1970s by NWF and its affiliate Nebraska Wildlife Federation, to protect water flow in the river. The settlement allowed construction of Grayrocks Dam (part of a huge power project in Wyoming) to go forward on a tributary to the North Platte River, but provided $7.5 million to underwrite the trust’s acquisition and preservation of habitat for cranes and other migratory birds. Through direct ownership and conservation easements, the organization today manages some 10,000 acres scattered along 40 miles of the Platte River.
As at Aransas, one of the biggest jobs for crane protectors along the Platte remains ensuring enough water. Success is usually years in the making. Beginning in 1997, NWF and Nebraska Wildlife embarked on a 10-year process of negotiations with state and federal government officials and a range of Platte River water users to craft what eventually became the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program.
Developing the program was supposed to take just three years. “It was hard for conservationists to remain optimistic,” recalls NWF board member and former Federation staff member Tom Dougherty, who has worked on Platte River issues for more than three decades. “But we stayed in the fight, as we had for the 30 years before that, because the river is vital to cranes and other wildlife. Nearly all the sandhill cranes in North America stop along the Platte during migration. We couldn’t let that region collapse.”
Now under way, the Platte River program (a joint effort by Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and the U.S. Department of Interior) has resulted in acquisition of 10,000 additional acres of riverine habitat and promises to provide 130,000 to 150,000 acre-feet of water annually to address river-flow needs. The water-delivery portion of the 13-year program is behind schedule, “which is a growing frustration of mine,” says Dougherty. “No matter how much habitat is acquired, the program will be a failure if we don’t get enough water into the system.”
Duane Hovorka, Nebraska Wildlife executive director, is cautiously optimistic—at least about the river’s short-term prospects. “The three states and the federal government made a commitment to not damage the river further. The program isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s certainly trying to make things better.” Will better be enough? A native Nebraskan, Hovorka says climate models forecast a drier, hotter future for his state: “If that’s the case, and you have more evaporation and more need for water for crops, that’s going to put additional demand on all of our rivers and water resources. So long-term, it does look kind of scary.”
What constitutes long-term for humans is the blink of an eye for species like cranes. Fossil records indicate cranes were visiting what is now Nebraska more than 9 million years ago, long before the Platte River first meandered across the region.
Following an ancient migration cycle, sandhills leave the Platte as summer beckons and fly to breeding grounds in the northern United States, Canada and northeastern Siberia. The entire migratory population of whooping cranes, meanwhile, nests among the marshes and bogs of Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park in northeastern Alberta and the southern Northwest Territories.
Cranes of both species mate for life, and a breeding pair typically rears only one offspring each summer. Then, as the days begin to shorten, sandhills and whoopers rise into the sky to retrace their journey, soaring southward to where the water is—for now.
Spying on Sandhills
In 2013, the Crane Trust began setting out cameras in wet meadows visited by sandhills along the Platte River. Recording a photo every 15 minutes around the clock, the project is a way to observe crane behavior and to assess how the birds respond to different habitat-management practices. In addition, cameras set out in the river itself this spring captured infrared nighttime images of roosting sandhill cranes—sometimes standing on one leg with their heads tucked under their wings—but also scenes of cranes “being quite active and social in the middle of the night,” says Crane Trust Director of Science Mary Harner. “We’re looking at things like, are they more active on full-moon nights or warmer nights” as well as what “might be disturbing them on the roost and how they respond to changing water levels.”
Watch the sandhill crane migration. Video at http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/Birds/Archives/2014/Cranes.aspx?utm_content=buffer80b4e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Renting beats owning when it comes to stuff
Something to think about before you make that next purchase – how much will you use it and can you just rent it for a short time and be done with it?
From cars to kids' toys, renting is a way to minimize personal possessions and achieve peace of mind.
By: Networx.com
September 23, 2014
Renting limited-use items like pressure washers can save you space in your home and
money in your checking account. (Photo: nanD_Phanuwat/Shutterstock)
"The more you have the more you want" may be a truism but like most truisms, this simple sentence contains a grain of…well…truth. America has long been known as a consumer society, where the hallmark of an individual's status has tended to be how much they own and what they are worth in financial terms. Since the economic downturn early in this century, though, people have been learning to tighten their belts and make do with less. Part of that process involves giving up traditional American consumerism and instead of buying more and more consumer goods, renting what they need when they need it. Would that work for you?
What you can rent
Nowadays you can temporarily "own" a huge assortment of material objects. Entertainment-related products have long been at the forefront of the rental market -- just look at the success of Netflix, for example. In recent years, tools to rent have turned into a hot ticket, especially when it comes to costly, infrequently used items such as pressure washers or power augers. Another fast growing rental field is fashion. Designer gowns, elegant tuxedos, or precious jewelry can be had for a single gala event, allowing you to attend in style without blowing your budget on something you'll wear only once.
Toy rental has also become quite successful, due, most likely, to children's' boundless thirst for novelty. (You have to wonder how the leasing firms deal with the inevitable wear and tear, though.) Renting a vehicle is nothing new, but now the field has updated to offer such in-demand services as the possibility to lease a car for just a few hours or to hire a bicycle from a roadside stand, dropping it off at another point along your journey.
What you gain from renting
Traditionally, folks have rented when it worked out cheaper than buying. Today's reasons are much more varied. Renting, especially locally, tends to be more eco-friendly compared to purchasing. It also frees up space in your home that would otherwise be used for storage. (And you know you're in trouble if you have to park outside year round because you've got so much stuff that you can't close your garage door -- this works only in mild climates, by the way.) As zero-dimensional living becomes an increasingly greater part of our lives thanks to the Internet, decluttering and minimization of material possessions are associated with peace of mind. On a more prosaic level, renting offers you the opportunity to try before you buy. You'll have access to the latest and best models and can select from a huge range of consumer goods.
What you lose
Of course, there are some sacrifices to be made. Renting means that you will lose out on the convenience of having a jigsaw, say, right there when you want it. Consider how often you'll actually use a tool or other object before deciding whether to invest.
If you hire evening wear, you may worry about staining or tearing the garment, or not getting it back to the rental company within the specified time frame. There can be health concerns connected to renting items like beds or other upholstered furniture, especially with the recent bedbug epidemic. Last but not least, rental deprives you of the pleasure of ownership. Tangible possessions can represent wealth, status, and security. What's more, they may have a value beyond the material; just think of the emotional satisfaction of a woman who's saved her (bought, not rented) wedding dress and passes it down for her daughter to use a generation later.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Why Can't More Cities Be Like Detroit? -- EPA
Jeff McMahon Contributor
8/06/2014
Detroit’s Lower East Side, which makes up about a quarter of the city, lost 40 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010, leaving what could have been a wasteland of vacant lots and boarded up homes. But almost simultaneously, the number of community gardens in Detroit blossomed from less than 100 to more than 1,400.
The people of Detroit suffer the effects of blight—only 19 percent of food stores carry the mix of foods recommended by the USDA, 56 percent of recipients redeem food stamps at liquor stores, one in five high school students is obese, and the number one cause of death is heart disease.
a combined fence, recycled-tire trellis and clothesline at the Earth Works
community garden in Detroit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But Detroit’s community gardens now produce 200 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables per year, residents who work those gardens eat 2.5 more servings per day of fruits of vegetables than their neighbors, and property values near the gardens are rising by up to 20 percent.
These numbers represent preliminary results from a network of organizations trying to leverage Detroit’s vacant land against its social ills.
“We have a resource to attend to these issues, which is our vacant land,” said Ashley Atkinson, co-director of Keep Growing Detroit, a non-profit organization whose goal is to cultivate a food-sovereign Detroit that grows the majority of its fruits and vegetables within city limits.
Keep Growing Detroit is one of a number of organizations featured in a webinar Wednesday hosted by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Sustainable Communities, which hopes that Detroit’s “steps to broadly transform vacant properties may be applicable in other Legacy Cities that have neighborhood challenges similar to Detroit’s.”
“Even though the land is vacant there still is an opportunity to create a place and to create that nexus for some sort of sense of community,” said Jon Grosshans, an EPA community planner.
The webinar explored many uses beyond food production. Vacant land is being repurposed for storm water runoff, environmental remediation, wetlands, woodlands, cut-flower growing, orchards, nurseries, market gardens, greenways, open space, parks.
“Arguably our community has the largest concentration of vacant land and city-owned vacant land,” said Maggie Desantis, president of the Warren/Conner Development Coalition, which is working on a Lower East Side Action Plan.
“We faced the reality that we were looking at a lot of open space and we could not assume that we would regain that population for the foreseeable future, so how could that land be reused?”
Although Detroit does not expect its population to rebound, officials there expect the greening of its vacant land to be a draw for anyone considering Detroit.
“We know we need to make a better appeal to folks to be here overall,” said Dan Kinkead, director of projects for Detroit Future City, a philanthropically-financed planning initiative to green Detroit.
While Detroit has made significant enough strides to serve as an EPA-endorsed model for other cities, challenges remain. The city has its own processes for handling vacant land, for example, in the form of the newly created
Detroit Landbank Authority, which is charged with collecting and softly disposing of vacant land.
“Right now it’s not clear how the community can access city-owned vacant land in order to work on these projects, in order to actually prove that it makes sense for us to repurpose all the vacant land that we have in front of us,” Desantis said. “That is currently one of our major obstacles.”
Friday, October 10, 2014
Next Saturday -- Everglades Day
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Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations in order to participate in programs, services, and activities must contact the Special Populations Section at 954-357-8170 or TTY 954-537-2844 at least five (5) business days prior to the scheduled meeting or event.
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Saturday, October 18
10 a.m.-4 p.m.
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Celebrate this one-of-a-kind South Florida ecosystem with a free day of fun, educational activities.
• Science Eye Everglades Nature Walks (9 and 10 a.m.)
• Guest Speaker Presentations
11 a.m. • Everglades Restoration
Dr. Martha Nungesser
Senior Environmental Scientist
South Florida Water Management District
Noon • Orchids of the 'Glades
Mike Owen
Park Biologist
Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park
1 p.m. • Invaders of the Everglades
Dennis Giardina
Everglades Regional Biologist
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
2 p.m. • Native/Non-Native Bingo (for ages 12 and over)
University of Florida's Croc Docs, prizes will be awarded
3 p.m. • Reptile Identification Workshop & Demonstration
(with live python)
Python Patrol Program, FWC
Jenny Novak and Jeff Fobb
• Conservation Agency/Organization Booths
• Children/Youth Activities
• Scavenger Hunt
• Craft Projects
• Bounce House
• Guided Levee Bicycle Ride
(3 p.m. – bring your own bike or rent one)
• Discounted Airboat Rides (visit booth area for details)
• Prizes & Giveaways
• Food Items for Sale by Everglades Holiday Park Deli.
Gator Bites, Frog Legs, or Hamburgers and Hot Dogs
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